Please join us for Ethnoise! The Ethnomusicology Workshop, taking place this Thursday afternoon, February 11, from 4:30 to 6 in Goodspeed 205. We welcome Professor Charles Garrett, Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater & Dance, presenting: “Joking Matters: Humor and American Music”.

Biography:

Charles Hiroshi Garrett is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance. His graduate work at the University of California, Los Angeles was supported by an AMS Howard Mayer Brown Fellowship as well as an AMS-50 Fellowship, and his dissertation received the Wiley Housewright Award from the Society for American Music.  His book _Struggling to Define a Nation: American Music and the Twentieth Century_, published by University of California Press in 2008, was awarded the Irving Lowens Memorial Book Award by the Society for American Music.  He now serves as editor-in-chief for _The Grove Dictionary of American Music, second edition_.

Abstract:

This presentation discusses a book-in-progress that examines how various forms of humor–including slapstick, wit, satire, parody, and irony–have occupied and shaped American musical culture.  Incorporating research on humor from across the humanities and sciences, my work seeks to address the play and pleasure of musical humor as well as its power, depth, and gravity. My work seeks to integrate considerations about humor into research about an array of musical genres, and to insert music into ongoing scholarly conversations about humor.